Most providers of supplemental educational services (SES) under “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) have offered tutoring services for more than five years, employ certified teachers as tutors, and provide services to fewer than 500 students in one state, according to an August 2005 survey by the Education Industry Association (EIA). 

“The Promise and Challenge of Supplemental Educational Services: The Providers’ Perspective” offers an in-depth look at the tutoring organizations that are providing services to an estimated 300,000 low-income students in struggling schools across the country. 

The report, based on responses from 216 providers nationwide, shows that

• Most for-profit tutoring providers (58 percent), and many non-profit providers (49 percent), have more than five year’s experience offering services.
  
  
• Most say that 85 percent or more of their instructors are state-certified teachers.
  
  
• About two-thirds of the organizations offer services in only one state, and 66 percent serve no more than 500 students.
  
  
• All respondents serve at least some students who are either English language learners or who have disabilities. 
  
  
• Over 40 percent offer a student-instructor ratio of less than 10 students per tutor, and about one-quarter of for-profit and non-profit providers offering one-on-one tutoring.
  
  
• The number of instructional hours offered varies widely with approximately equal numbers of organizations reporting to offer 31-45 hours (28 percent), 46-60 hours (24 percent), and more than 60 hours (25 percent) of instruction. 

Some of the challenges cited by SES providers responding to the survey include:

• Access to School Facilities. While more than half of all SES providers report they offer services at the school site, most for- and non-profit providers expressed concern about access to those facilities.
  
  
• Student Attendance. Most responders, regardless of provider type, see this as a challenge. Attendance rates do not appear to be associated with student-to-instructor ratio, number of instructional hours, or the location in which services are offered. Few reported attendance rates of more than 90 percent, with most reporting attendance rates of 50 percent to 90 percent.
  
  
• District Administration of SES. While providers acknowledged that districts themselves face many challenges in implementing SES, they expressed frustrations with district interactions, including: parent notification, access to school buildings, contractual issues, and finances and billing. Providers questioned some districts overall support for SES, and sixty percent of providers do not believe that districts gave parents sufficient notice to enroll their children in SES.